


Which of us has his desire?

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: F/M, Female Friendship, Fluff, Gift Fic, Love Letters, Romance, Secret Love Letters, Sermons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:51:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: What she found wasn't meant for her. She was nearly certain of that.





	Which of us has his desire?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fericita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fericita/gifts).



“Emma, I’ve been looking for you. Dr. Foster needs someone to assist and Nurse Hastings is already occupied,” Mary said, a little breathless. Emma knew it still cost her friend to do the simplest tasks and it was only through her sheer Yankee stubbornness, unaltered by her terrible fever, that Dr. Foster had acquiesced to his wife’s return to the hospital, though he insisted she might only undertake the lightest of the nursing. Mary sat beside beds and wrote letters, read from the Bible or the copy of _Vanity Fair_ she’d crowed over finding in the former hotel’s former library. The rest of the nursing was left to the nuns, to impossibly superior Anne Hastings, and to Emma herself. It was not unusual that someone might be looking for her, not surprising that Mary had taken it upon herself to seek Emma out. Still, she was startled and blushed, a deep, unbecoming red she was sure.

“Oh! I’m sorry, I won’t be a minute!” Emma exclaimed, hoping Mary would not notice the paper clutched in her right hand, her left hand pressed against her bodice.

“It’s not an emergency. Dr. Foster can wait a few minutes, a quarter-hour even, if you should need the time. To collect yourself,” Mary said kindly. Emma knew she’d been caught out, though Mary could not know the entirety of it, not unless she was indeed a white witch as the Irishmen of the New York 4th Division claimed.

“I’ll hurry along,” Emma said.

“If there’s something you wanted to tell me, or to ask…I know I am not your mother, but I am a married woman, not unduly troubled by the vagaries of life. You need only ask,” Mary offered.

“Thank you, but it’s all right. I’m all right,” Emma said quickly. Mary glanced at the paper in Emma’s hand and the slightest smile curved her lips.

“I’ll let him know you’re on your way. He’ll be all the better for a cup of coffee and the last of Miz Johnson’s pie. She’s the lightest hand with pastry,” Mary said, walking out of the room with her regular hesitant gait. She’d been left lame after her fever but refused to use a stick, arguing that Dr. Foster should not want her well-armed if he was going to argue with her about the relative merits of Dickens and Mrs. Stowe.

“Yes,” Emma said, but to no one. Mary had gone and Emma could return to the page in her hand. She had thought to fetch a book for Henry, some dry theological tome she would tease him about, but hadn’t found anything where she thought it might be. He’d said the book was on his desk, or the table that served as his desk, but she’d found nothing but his Book of Common Prayer and papers, some stacked and some nearly scattered about. She’d imagined they were letters he was writing for sick men or a draft of his next sermon. She hadn’t meant to read a word—when she saw her own name.

 

__

> _Dear Emma,_
> 
> _How utterly without shame I am, to address you so, even in this letter, one I will burn before I go to sleep tonight. Dear, for you are so to me, dearer each day, dearest every night and Emma, so perfectly yourself it seems impossible any other woman should be called the same. I cannot be like Jed Foster and call you by a thousand different variations, pet names and honorifics, as he does with our Nurse Mary. And I cannot think the day will come, the sun will rise when I can speak of how I care for you, how much more thoughtfully and diligently I should like to care for you. It is hard enough to dip my pen back into its inkwell, to write this word and the next, when I should be writing of Corporal Bailey or my sermon, when all I wish to write is your name, Emma, to write dear Emma, my Emma, darling, adorable Emma…_

She’d gasped softly when she’d read it. There was more, but she’d looked away. He’d never intended it for her to see, to read. To know the secrets of his heart, the fearful affection of his soul. Her heart pounded in her breast and she’d laid her hand there as a consolation—or confirmation that it was her heart and not cannon-fire, not a sudden, thunderous storm. And then Mary had called for her and she’d blushed, scorched and thrilled in one. She put the paper back where she’d found it. It seemed bolder to try and conceal it beneath the others and she could never take it from the room. 

“You couldn’t find the book?” Henry said as she walked past him on her way to the room where Dr. Foster preferred to operate.

“No. I looked, but all I saw were some papers, all jumbled. Maybe your next sermon?” she said.

“No. That’s not what those are,” Henry answered, gazing at her steadily, solemnly. Except that there was a light in his dark blue eyes, the most decorous provocation.

“I mustn’t keep Dr. Foster waiting. Mrs. Foster can only sweeten his temper so much,” Emma said hastily.

“Oh, a man will wait quite happily, if the woman he cares for is nearby,” Henry replied, smiling.

“Oh! I shan’t like to find out you’re mistaken,” Emma said, gathering up her skirts in the hand that had held his letter.

“You shan’t,” Henry repeated. Or promised. Her feet tripped along beneath her to the memory of his words. Dear, dearer, dearest Emma. Dr. Foster didn’t scold once when she was distracted, not even when she offered lint instead of his gold-tipped scalpel. He laughed, quite a loud, booming chuckle that might have woken the anesthetized boy, and then muttered to himself, _the darling buds of May_ , laughing again in the way she knew meant he’d pleased himself first. And the boy lived, clamored for a hearty meal the next day, so Emma understood no harm had been done.

**Author's Note:**

> For Fericita who wanted some Emmry. I decided to go quite fluffy though this exists in my Season 3 world where Mary's recovery was not uncomplicated.
> 
> Title from Vanity Fair. Jed quotes Shakespeare, the show-off.


End file.
